PHOTOGRAPHY
with Natacha Lesueur
Last minute risk As the students enter their final year of training at the ECAL, and their interests and methods take shape, it's time to take advantage of this last project to question our own rules, achievements and influences, not to be satisfied with them, and to take risks.
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Tamara Janes
The students task is to create their own story, storyline, narrative or sequences based on the existing given images. Using their personal interests, imagination and ideas they link the images together. They can continue the plot of the images, do in-depth research, write fictional stories or tell stories based on personal experiences. The students had the freedom to photograph, generate or film.
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Olivia Schenker
Hot N Cold By making a very short film, students learn fundamental notions in the narrative, visual and conceptual development of video production. The project provides essential technical skills in shooting, lighting, camera movement, sound recording, editing and post-production.
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Laurence Bonvin
Liquid Times Produce a project using photography and video on the theme of fluidity, liquid form and water.
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Natacha Lesueur
Documentary, the power of make-believe. Based on projects developed around a common theme, the students develop a personal, in-depth project around the theme of pretense. They build a project that plays with the limits of veracity in photography, using it as an artifice of deception.
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Charlotte Krieger
The aim of this course is to introduce students to the creation and management of a complex photographic project involving sets, characters and lighting. The theme is free.
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Orsola Valenti
Hors-champ “Showing by hiding, revealing by stealing": for a political practice of the audiovisual image. The main aim of the course is to raise awareness of the political dimension of the audiovisual gesture and give students the tools to distinguish the cinematographic image from the media image. Whereas the latter - flattened, emptied and therefore interchangeable - overwhelms its receptor, rendering it powerless, the cinematographic image liberates emotion and critical reflection. In this way, it goes beyond the supposedly faithful representation of reality.
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Laurence Bonvin
Endurance In this course, the objectives are to allow students to experiment with new approaches or techniques regarding past, ongoing, or diploma projects. They also have the opportunity to revisit and refine subjects that have not met their satisfaction in terms of concept, form, technique, or execution. This experience aims to expand ideas, refine techniques, continue unfinished work while improving it, or build a more comprehensive body of images. Endurance lies at the heart of this process, whether it's persevering in completing a project, revisiting an idea until it's exhausted, or overcoming obstacles such as lack of time, self-confidence, or courage. This semester thus offers students the opportunity to confront their limits, surpass them, and achieve their best in their endeavors.
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Natacha Lesueur
Seduce, they said Based on projects developed around the theme of seduction, students develop a personal, in-depth project over the whole semester.
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Matthieu Gafsou
The workshop week 4x5 is both an introduction to the 4x5 technical camera and a way to kickstart a photographic project. Students experience the process of analog shooting, from development to large format printing. This intense week is highly technical, but also focused on developing a photographic language, allowing for a better understanding of the fundamental workings of photography.
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Natacha Lesueur
Seduce, they said Based on projects developed around the theme of seduction, students develop a personal, in-depth project over the whole semester.
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Orsola Valenti
Image, sound and politics: how to raise the image The main aim of the course is to stimulate reflection on the audiovisual gesture. By confronting students with the complexity of audiovisual creation and its compositional dimension (image and sound, space and time, frame and rhythm, body and set), they are encouraged to grasp its richness and potential.
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Charlotte Krieger
The aim of this course is to introduce students to the creation and management of a complex photographic project involving sets, characters and lighting. The theme is free.
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Matthieu Gafsou
The workshop week 4x5 is both an introduction to the 4x5 technical camera and a way to kickstart a photographic project. Students experience the process of analog shooting, from development to large format printing. This intense week is highly technical, but also focused on developing a photographic language, allowing for a better understanding of the fundamental workings of photography.
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Jean-Vincent Simonet
During one week, the students developed techniques that transform perception and the relationship with the corpus of images: erasure, displacement, loss of the sensation of reality.
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Taiyo Onorato
This workshop focused on staged photography, particularly emphasizing staged portraits. The concentration was on the two essential elements of the portrait: working with the object and manipulating its background. Staged portraits set themselves apart from mere snapshots by actively creating an image, steering clear of reality. Tools like light, background, and pose were employed to craft a deliberate narrative. Individuals were staged, altered in specific ways, adorned with outfits and masks. The workshop delved into the interest in masks as tools for transformation and representation. Throughout the workshop, masks were produced using available means, and they became the central objects of staging. Students photographed and filmed them, capturing the essence of transformation. The second element of the workshop, which focused on the background, pop-up techniques were experimented with. The backdrop, a dynamic part of the narrative, was manipulated using cleverly designed sets and unexpected spatial techniques. The focus was not just on capturing moments but on crafting them, bringing forth stories that transcended the boundaries of reality. The workshop provided a platform for unleashing creativity and experimentation.
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Geray Mena
The workshop focused on the dissolution of genres within photography: documentary, fashion, still life and portraiture. Students built bridges between commercial and artistic practice.
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Elizaveta Porodina
For this workshop, Elizaveta Porodina asked the students to explore the theme "AFTERHUMAN". This theme opens up perspectives for capturing futuristic landscapes, representing the potential fusion of technology and humanity. Think about visually depicting the coexistence of artificial intelligence, cybernetics or biotechnology with natural elements. Experiment with innovative techniques to convey a sense of evolution or transcendence. This exploration invites photographers to creatively interpret and visually narrate a future beyond conventional human experience.
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Laurence Bonvin
For two semesters, second-year students developped projects related to the thematic Reclaiming Water. They were invited to question and procuce images in relation to the countless political, social, economic, human and environmental issues linked to water. Who owns it? Is it a common good or a marketable resource? How can we visually address these issues?
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Laurence Bonvin
During the first semester of the third year, this course enables students to take up a project they have already started, which could be continued in the second semester for the diploma. Students are encouraged to take risks in form, technique, production or subject matter.
PHOTOGRAPHY
with Natacha Lesueur
Over the course of a semester, the students develop a project that examines the challenges of auteur photography and develops their personal expression. The project may be continued as a diploma project in the second semester.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
by Lara Zettl
Future Fossils recounts the discovery of the first human-made fossil and illustrates the pathway to its origin in five chapters. Between a scientific report and a travel journal, this project shows human beings’ effect on planet Earth by contextualising their social, geopolitical, and economic dimensions. Abandoned shores, shifting oceans and overloaded landfills reflect the environmentally damaging colonial legacy of a specific material, i.e., plastic. This project tells the global stories of these fossilised artefacts, which bear witness to human beings’ excessive material culture and to the rivalry between the living and built realms.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
with Gilles Gavillet & Jonathan Hares
GRAPHIC DESIGN
by Isabel Garcia Argos
Voz (voice in Spanish) is an audio-visual project that aims to make these voices heard by the public in order to raise awareness of the issue. Through four fictional yet likely stories, this series take us into the intimacy and feelings of women survivors. The narrative style and the visual universe contrast with the real cruelty of the images and language.
FILM STUDIES
with Gilles Marchand, Marie Monge
Vinoth, a refugee, is looking for a volunteer activity to escape his loneliness, but no one is willing to accept his help.
FILM STUDIES
with Gilles Marchand, Marie Monge
Luna returns to the family home where still lives her younger sister, Diana. Diana has been living alone in this large, dilapidated house since the death of their father.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
with Alain Bellet, Christophe Guignard, Gaël Hugo, Laura Nieder, Pauline Saglio
Mention Très bien Through our entertainment media, partnerships and sponsored content are becoming omnipresent. Based on this observation, Reif i s a fictional account of the objectification of a digital influencer. Through different media created with computer generated images, we visualise the change of identity of this character who allocates areas of her body as advertising spaces, generating her metamorphosis from human to object. In order to realise the content for Reif , a process of digital production was set up, adjusting to the standards of avatar creation which affiliates this fiction to the current technical reality.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
by Julie Ryser
Dupliréalité aims to immerse us into reproductions of places of life that are essential to an individual’s existence. The cities explored include La Chaux-de-Fonds, Lausanne and Renens, which have a direct link with my own reality.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
with Alain Bellet, Christophe Guignard, Gaël Hugo, Laura Nieder, Pauline Saglio
Once upon a time, a few Homo Sapiens allowed humanity to escape the endless cycle of life and death. Together, leaving behind their individuality, they merged into a new form of existence, beyond humanity – as if in this second genesis man had created God in his own image. Data Riot questions the foundations of human individuality through a social science fiction halfway between a video game and a music video. Enter a futuristic world and experience your transplantation into a collective intelligence to the rhythm of the electronic sounds of the collective Curl. Based on your personal data and your decisions, the experience adapts to you and offers a disturbing experience of your own identity.
MEDIA & INTERACTION DESIGN
with Alain Bellet, Christophe Guignard, Gaël Hugo, Laura Nieder, Pauline Saglio
Grappaa is an artist-run exhibition space that I began working on in early 2021. It was built based on makeshift institutional spaces, e.g. art fairs and more recently, mass vaccination centres. The walls and furniture in these mega events become modules in the landscape of barren multipurpose warehouses. For Grappaa, through a process of urban hacking, the car parks become the grid for any spatial configuration. I pay rent by the hour. It’s not cheap.
FILM STUDIES
with Gilles Marchand, Marie Monge
In the small kitchen of a family home, two women in their fourties are chatting. Out of the blue, one of them kisses the other.
FILM STUDIES
with Gilles Marchand, Marie Monge
It is raining in the park. Natacha and her son Eli are looking for a shelter for the night. Walter wanders alone with his guitar.
FILM STUDIES
with Gilles Marchand, Marie Monge
Serge discovers what being a ghost is like but Martial, an old spirit, prevents him from having fun.
FILM STUDIES
with Gilles Marchand, Marie Monge
Karim and Adin are childhood friends. They haven't seen each other for a long time and get together for a drink to make up for lost time.
FILM STUDIES
with Gilles Marchand, Marie Monge
On the eve of Y2K, Christine finally introduces her lover, Mina, to her parents. The evening promises to be strange.
FILM STUDIES
with Gilles Marchand, Marie Monge
Two young skateboarders decide to go to a party, their evening gets complicated.
FILM STUDIES
with Laurent Larivière
Two stories temporalities each other ultimately : the encounter between a Swiss farmer and a Portuguese traveler, and a cow’s pregnancy.
FILM STUDIES
by Vuk Vukmanovic
A cinematographic necromancy calls the spectres of the past: by the means of VHS find the spectator submerges into the Berlin family's intimate play of the author's childhood. iamvuk@gmail.com https://www.iamvuk.com
FILM STUDIES
by Noémie Guibal
Cevennes, 1702. In a totalitarian political state, four men take up arms.
FILM STUDIES
by Théodora Menthonnex
My graduation project consisted of doing the sound recording for two films, one in the heart of the Swiss mountains, the other in the hustle and bustle of the city.
FILM STUDIES
by Malou Briand
From the 2007 presidential elections to the emergence of the #MeToo movement, from the suburbs to the French capital, “Dalia” traces the journey of a young woman in the contemporary world. It is a story of friendship and of upward social mobility. maloubriand@gmail.com
FILM STUDIES
with Claire Burger, Rachel Lang
Juan Antonio finds his father who is back home after a long absence. There, during the preparation of the most important religious festival of the city : the Ecce homo; father and son go to share in solitude, their hatreds for each other. santichacon91@gmail.com
FILM STUDIES
with Laurent Larivière
Two imprisoned brothers, with no dreams or realities, seek a bit of air to breathe.
FILM STUDIES
with Josée Deshaies
The movie tells two stories that temporalities each other ultimately : the encounter between a Swiss farmer and a Portuguese traveler, and a cow’s pregnancy.
FILM STUDIES
with Josée Deshaies
Rey and Moretti are two undercover narc in the middle of a police operation in the Swiss mountains of Valais. It’s during a routine operation that one of them will do a terrible mistake and together they will have to escape from this difficult situation.
FILM STUDIES
with Josée Deshaies
Two figures meet in a pitch black room to make love. Once the lights are on, Lucien and Anton are faced with their differences but are drawn even closer together.
FILM STUDIES
with Laurent Larivière
Staying with her mother after the fire, Sofia dreams of freedom. But the smell of smoke doesn't leave..
FILM STUDIES
with Laurent Larivière
Wednesdays after school Inès meets Julien on the train. The other passengers watch them.
FILM STUDIES
by Thibault Rodrigues
Cevennes, 1702. In a totalitarian political state, four men take up arms.
FILM STUDIES
with Laurent Larivière
A short film by Kimyan Flückiger